Pulling together the threads of our past

Among those Americans inspired by Lincoln were four black college students who in 1960 sat down at a whites-only lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C., Bush said, which now also has a place in the museum.

"In the lives of Francis Scott Key, Abraham Lincoln and those brave students in Greensboro," he said, "we see the best of America."

Soon, the mall on which the museum is located will fill with people, maybe millions of them, drawn to Washington for what is already being called a historic event - the inauguration of the first African-American president. (That, of course, is another legacy of our times - we now predict history, unlike in the past, where it had to happen first and only later declared as such.)

Hopefully, some of the visitors will take the chance to drop in on the newly renovated museum, and see the sweep of what came before our very own history-as-it-happens. McCullough practically begged those gathered in the atrium to get kids reading and visiting museums as a remedy to what he called several generations of historical illiteracy.

"How can we love our country," he asked, "and take no interest in our story?"